Turkey and Ukraine’s strategic positioning: economic, energy, and military cooperation in the geopolitical landscape between the European Union and Russia

The geopolitical positioning of Ukraine and Turkey between the European Union (EU) and Russia holds significant implications for their economies. The analysis first highlights how Turkey’s balancing act between the West and Russia has been further complicated by the war in Ukraine, offering both challenges and opportunities in economic, energy, and military fields. The chapter then turns to Ukraine showing how the annexation of the Crimea and military intervention in Donbas in 2014 prompted extensive internal reforms and a definitive shift towards European and Euro-Atlantic integration. The chapter argues that the domestic political trajectories in Turkey and Ukraine involve sequences of opening and closing, democratic reform and authoritarian resurgence, influenced by internal factors but simultaneously linked to the EU’s ambiguity towards their European aspirations and Russia’s geopolitical aspirations.